Accompanied with continual advancement of communication technology, a diversity of handheld electronic devices, such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and satellite navigation devices that are designed to provide various functions, are now considered as necessities in people's daily life. Among the handheld electronic devices, satellite navigation devices with navigation and route planning capabilities are particularly popular.
A satellite navigation device generally receives current location and timing information associated with the satellite navigation device through a satellite positioning system. Common satellite positioning systems include Global Positioning System (GPS) and Assisted Global Positioning System (AGPS).
Apart from conventional satellite positioning and navigation functions, newer satellite positioning systems further provide users with added functions such as playing digital television, playing music and displaying constellations. When the user activates a constellation display function of the satellite navigation device, and according to location information (e.g., the longitude and latitude) and timing information received by a receiver from the satellite positioning system, the satellite navigation device selects the constellations corresponding to a current location of the user and a current season from a large selection of constellations stored in a database, and displays the selected constellations onto a monitor of the satellite navigation device. Thus, the user is able to observe both the constellations displayed on the satellite navigation system and the constellations in the sky.
However, by using a satellite navigation system for constellation observation, a user is nevertheless faced with certain complications and inconveniences. For example, since a monitor of a common satellite navigation device is rather small, the monitor is only able to display constellations of a part of the sky corresponding to what the user can actually see. That is, the device cannot completely display constellations of the entire viewable sky. Once the user changes an observing direction, manual adjustment is needed to change positions of the constellations displayed on the monitor of the satellite navigation device, so that the constellations displayed on the monitor of the satellite navigation device correctly correspond the observed constellations in the sky. Such mechanism is indeed inconvenient for the user.
Therefore, it is an objective of embodiments of the invention to provide a handheld electronic apparatus and a method thereof for, among other things, overcoming the foregoing issue.